Death is feared as birth is forgotten.

The line juxtaposes two asymmetries in human experience: we commonly fear death, yet we rarely dwell on (or even remember) the equally mysterious transition of birth. Horton’s aphorism suggests that dread of death is not purely rational but is amplified by unfamiliarity and imagination; birth, though no less momentous, is psychologically “safe” because it lies behind us and is socially normalized. Implicitly, the quote invites a reframing of death as another threshold rather than an absolute catastrophe—something that might be approached with the same unselfconscious acceptance we grant our own beginnings. It also critiques selective memory: what we cannot recall (birth) we discount, while what we cannot know (death) we magnify.